to infinity and beyond
by jonsnows
Summary: It's only when they're long gone that you see what it was you've missed. —somewhat au klauscaroline.


**to infinity and beyond.**

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><p><em>look at the stars<br>__look how they shine for you  
><em>_and everything they do  
><em>_yeah, they were all yellow _

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><p>Everything just seems kind of surreal when you become a vampire, really.<p>

Caroline likes to compare it to getting a new pair of shoes. In the way that they have to be broken in before you feel comfortable sauntering around in them. Of course, she supposes, they'd probably be shoes that'd take a few hundred years or so to be broken in.

She watches Damon and Stefan and the Originals parade around like it's their own natural skin and some part of her envies them.

(The other half misses humanity, and thinks, _darling, you've got an eternity to go._)

She's prettier than she ever wanted to be and she's even immortal to a certain point, and she's powerful, a force to be contended with – but for some reason she just can't understand, all she feels is _empty._

* * *

><p>A stack of papers show up in a messy pile, on the coverlet of her bed.<p>

Exasperated, she flips through them, barely looking, only to find out that they're sketches – all of her.

She glares at the ceiling and not even a minute has passed before she's at his house, papers and hair slightly ruffled in the wind, waiting for some sort of explanation because as far as she's concerned, his creepy stalker self can go to hell and she really doesn't think she can take any more of these Edward Cullen moves he's been pulling lately.

Rebekah opens the door.

"What do you want?" She asks shortly, arms folded across her chest. There's a slightly tenser demeanour around her than usual.

"I don't want these," Caroline protests. She tries to shove the drawings back at Rebekah but the sister shakes her head and turns away.

"Not like I have any use for them."

"Well, give them back to Klaus for me, at least," she tries, but Rebekah's lips curl into some nasty sort of smile that doesn't quite reach her narrowed eyes, and she tilts her head.

"God, you know, for all the show you put on to be nice, you really are crueller than you appear. Why don't you just give them back to him yourself?" She nearly spits. She gestures to the table, and where a nice, potted flower arrangement should be, there's a jar, filled with specks of gray and grief and the ending of something that could have only been tragic.

Rebekah sneers and Kol and Elijah look at her with watchful eyes as she stumbles backwards.

It's quiet, but somehow, everything inside her is screaming.

Yeah. Surreal.

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><p>She gets home, shoves the drawings into the top drawer of her vanity.<p>

She slams it shut so hard that it ends up rattling the entire damned thing, and the drawer pops out again half-open.

By the time the phone rings, her blood-red nails are a jagged, bitten mess. A part of her hopes it's him, just to prove that he's still here. To think that it's finally all over is just too overwhelming, no matter how much she hated him in the first place.

But it's just Elena, telling her that everything's true and that it was Stefan who did it. Her mouth goes sour. She doesn't think she's hated Elena's voice as much as she does now.

The phone slips out of her hands and her head – or is it the world – starts to spin out of control.

She should be – no, she _is_ glad. Good riddance, she tells herself. Good riddance.

So why doesn't she believe it?

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><p>Tyler pays her a visit that night.<p>

He wraps his arms tight around her, the arms that once made her feel safe and told her she was protected from any harm. Tonight they feel like a prison.

"Caroline, he's gone," he laughs, picking her up and spinning her around. "I'm free. We're free."

"I know," she murmurs, burying her face in his neck. "I missed you, Ty."

He kisses her and they have sex, and while Tyler is sleeping, she places her head on his chest, tracing her fingers along the wrinkles of the sheets and listening to the rhythm of his steady heart. She can't help but think that the return to normalcy isn't all it's cracked up to be.

(Truth be told, normalcy was never an option.)

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><p>She receives another expected visitor at around four in the morning.<p>

But she can't sleep anyway, not with this newfound insomnia, and the more the merrier, isn't that right? She slips out of bed as quietly as she can and unlocks the door, opening it just a crack.

It's Elijah.

His eyes are deep holes, timeless, filled with sorrow and loss and angst and she realizes suddenly that he understands.

"We're leaving." He interrupts her thoughts, breaking the silence of the night. It's so strained, it's almost awkward. "There's really nothing left for us, here, at least, now that he's gone."

"Why are you telling me?" She asks, slightly confused, but tone neutral, all the same. She pulls the string of her robe tighter around her, as if it could block out the cold.

"You are troubled," he says, slowly, with thought. "Don't be. It isn't your loss to mourn."

"He was a monster," she laughs shakily, in disbelief, recovering after a split second.

"He was," Elijah doesn't hesitate to agree. He gives her the strangest of looks. "And yet, how could a monster care for someone? Some part of him cared for you, no matter how small it was."

"Don't give me that shit," she replies incredulously, hissing. "What makes you think I miss him?"

"You don't choose who you love, Caroline," he tells her. "It's a pity, isn't it?"

"I –

"Don't be so quick to judge. We all were. Goodbye, Caroline. Tell them we've left. "

He's gone suddenly, fading away into the night. The disrupted leaves swirl around her bare feet, the only sign of his ever having been there the first place. She takes a seat on the porch chair, and tries to remember a man who was merciless, who killed without a second thought, who hurt her and her friends just to get his way.

It's there, alright. The monster is there.

But mingled with this imaginary figure, lies thoughts she doesn't want to bring herself to realize. A man who saved her from death, who drew pictures of the girl he admired, a man who was full of flaws, but a man nonetheless.

Ordinary.

Human.

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><p>The first thing she does after she graduates is book the first flight she can find to Paris.<p>

She thinks that after she'll go to London, Rome, Venice, Milan, Barcelona – the list goes on and on.

No one seems surprised.

She grabs a bag and a coat and a few cute things from her closet, but before she leaves, she turns to that drawer. She eyes it for a moment, then grabs the drawings, stuffing them heartlessly, feeling satisfied when she hears them crumple inside the bag.

Then she leaves Mystic Falls, because Caroline Forbes was always meant for bigger and better things.

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><p>She's on the plane when she finally decides to open the duffel.<p>

She sort of inhales this deep sigh, because it's something she's been dreading for a while, but she decides to go through with it anyway.

The first few are just portraits of her from the shoulder up, her face, from different angles. She makes a snort of contempt, pushing them aside quickly. Caroline thinks better of it, then picks them up once again and starts tearing at the sketches, into more and more pieces until the drawings are reduced into a pile of confetti.

The shreds are wet, stained with tears and mascara and a stubborn unwillingness to cry. The graphite on the sheets is starting to blur.

She doesn't hesitate to do the same to the rest.

The plane lands in the city of love and lights and even though people look at her strangely she just releases the scraps of paper into the air. They fly away like beautiful white birds, unfurling their wings into the sky.

It's only when she's in a taxi cab, reaching into the bag for her wallet to pay, that she discovers one more blindingly white square corner of paper, wedged between a tour guide and a beginner's manual on common phrases in French.

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><p>She sits down in a charming little café and pulls the paper out, and it's ironic because that one just so happens to be the masterpiece of them all.<p>

The picture's drawn in charcoal. She's wearing the floral dress – the one she's wearing right now, a scarf tied around her neck, hair blowing in the wind, sitting on the edge of the Eiffel, with her head on her palm. The strokes are thick and dark in some places, thin and detailed in others, black and white contrasting, but somehow working together.

"That's beautiful," the waiter comments from behind her, and she can't think of anything snarky to say in response because it really is.

He's written her name on the back and then scribbled out the rest. She presses her fingers to the ink as if she could make it disappear by contact, and then moves her hands away, because sometimes, you don't need words.

Sometimes, emotions are enough.

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><p>She climbs, hand reaching out for the criss-crossed lattice pattern of the metal rails.<p>

With one last heave she pulls herself up onto the ledge, and collapses promptly, because even vampire strength has its limits, and climbing the Eiffel tower just so happens to nearly surpass them.

She brushes a sweaty blond curl away from her forehead and leans her back against the landmark. It's night time, but the lights of the city are still bright, like their own little stars, dragged down to the Earth, illuminating the sky above. Never stopping, never ending, for anyone.

She sits there, drinking it all in, with her eyes, with her ears, with her mind.

When she closes her eyes, there are imprints of the city, memories on the back of her lids.

They fill her, and eternity becomes a meaningless word, because she's sitting on top of the world.

Infinite.

Caroline thinks that Klaus would have liked it.

(She was right.)

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><p><strong>an:** All comments are appreciated. (: Don't favorite without dropping by to tell me what you thought :P

The thing is, I don't have problems with other people who don't like Klaroline. But what I do have problems with are people who bash the pairing or put it down, because that's really not fair at all. If you don't like Klaus and Caroline, then fine, to each their own, but don't go around hating just because other people do. I think it's very realistic. So my aim was to write a Klaroline story that seemed somewhat believable - I don't know, it's kind of cliché, I guess, because I'm a sucker for those kinds of things, but just because Klaus and Caroline might share a few feelings, doesn't mean that they'll get their happy ending (as much as I want them to.) But they can still be considered a pairing. They can still be justified. So that's what I was trying to show.

I don't know if that makes sense, but yeah, I'll stop rambling like an idiot now (:


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